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Armenians are very serious about using vegetables and fruits. Like everywhere in Transcaucasia they are eaten raw, dried, pickled and marinated; besides, they are obligatory ingredients for making soups and main dishes. Not only vegetables but fruits (quinces, cherry plums, lemons, pomegranates, raisins, dried pitted and halved apricots) are also widely used when cooking meat and fish which results in their original taste.
Armenian table is impossible to imagine without all kinds of salted vegetables and herbs - eggplants, aubergines, purslane and others. The ingredients for Armenian meat soups often include apples, quinces, dried pitted and halved apricots, walnuts; the fish ones - cornelian cherries; mushrooms - cherry plums, dried plums, and raisins. Some Armenian vegetable dishes are practically not cooked at all. Aubergines, pumpkin, peas, lentil, beans and other vegetables are normally added to the meat dishes as ingredients.
Vegetable diet is also supplemented by wildly growing herbs – there are about 300 of them available - and spices.
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